No garbage

Taking a bit of a ride after the office, I headed down the Maisonneuve bike path and made a quick painting near the Girouard underpass. This sign is posted at the alley behind a car mechanic, I just liked the contrast, and the interesting textures on the brick wall behind, which was covered in graffiti. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny for once, I hope to get some good Spring scenes done. 

No garbage, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, May 2026

Spring... even pylons turning green

Trees need lots of rain in the spring but how about liquor? This tree had a small plastic liquor bottle wedged in its branches, as if it were taking a swig. Its down at the Fort street ramps, part of a small park called Ernest Cormier Esplanade. I was hoping there would be flowers, but maybe this kind of tree wont make flowers. Its only half the tree shown. 

Spring tree drinking, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, May 2026

Even the pylons are turning green this spring! I spotted some rare green and orange pylons down near the Notre Dame and Peel construction site, it seemed essential to paint them. Usually the pylons are orange and white, sometimes with magenta or black. This location is where the highway underpass starts, and many signs.

Green and orange pylons, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, May 2026

Its a sign of summer more than spring... orange traffic signs and construction. This one is part of the massive upheaval around Peel street downtown, but the site is up on st Antoine cross with Cathedral street. I made the background deliberately confusing, like WTF, or where am I? The orange is a mix of PO62, with dabs of PO73... I call it 'Montreal Orange'

Cathedral st Antoine construction., watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, May 2026

 

Spring palette, thoughts on Winnipeg

After rebuilding my entire colour palette during the pandemic year, its been pretty much stable for the past several years. In the paint-out above you can see the range I use on location. Top left are earth paints, top middle are cool shadow paints, top right are green range, bottom left are highlight colours, with a blob of black paint off to the right. I keep a few within the mixing areas, like raw sienna, pyrol orange, indo blue, and for the Spring I carry bismuth yellow for depicting new foliage. So there are a little over 20 paints here, with some duplicates. The scribbles are the pigment codes, which are usually marked on the tube somewhere. I go to Jane Blundell's website to look up pigment codes and paint names on her colour swatches.  Also Handprint.com by MacEvoy has a tome of knowldege in his guide to watercolours page. 

Winnipeg surprised me with its subtle colouration. To be fair, I was there in Spring about a week before the green started to come out, so things were rather dusty, or rather sandy. The earth around Winnipeg comes from the great plains, grassy lands, its a sandy colour the same as raw sienna. They use this sand to put on the snow in the winter, so streets and parking lots were still covered in it. Moreover, the bricks of many older buildings were sandstone... a yellow ochre tone that could be easily made with variations of earth paints. There are prominent trees... not too tall, fanning out like mops pointing up, and with scraggly branches. They were painted with raw umber a dark brown, and indo blue to create greyish brown. Its the first time I ran out of brown paint on one of my palettes. I bring two palettes when I travel now so as to not run out. In the painting above, I mixed various yellow and brown colours, and called the painting Winni-beige, a play on words. 

Winni-beige, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, May 2026
 

Night Goose

With night falling upon Montreal, this hopeful goose thought I might have some handouts. It seemed slightly mad to paint a goose at night under a lamp next to the Lachine canal, with a train bridge and creepy looking tree in the background. Eventually it wandered off. Geese fly up to Canada to feast on grass and insects, then fly back down south for the winter. There were lots of geese in Winnipeg, which was neat, I painted two geese flying over the red river. To do the grass I made a three-part blend of lime yellow (PY184+PG36), neutral green (PBk31 plus the lime mix), then dark green (PBk31 + PG36). When dry, I overlaid the grass texture using various colours so as to create the illusion of a lamp illuminating grass. As I painted this, the thought occurred to me: "What the heck am I doing?" Lol, I quite like this painting. 

Night Goose, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, May 2026

Night paintings, pops of colours all around

Heading out into the evening and feeling a little down, I sought out pops of colours all around. Here, a lamp was illuminating the grass at dusk, just after sunset. In the back groud is the Atwater market tower, some city buildings, and the Lachine Canal in the middle. It was very moist and cool which made for lively watercolours tonight. 

Canal dusk lamp Atwater tower, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, May 2026

This prominent graffiti on an old warehouse by the Peel Basin can be credited to P2EE, WAR, and FOST. I changed it to PJD26 though for the painting.. In the background is a new condo with a bright green light running across the roof, and other pops of lights from windows and lamps. I vary the light colours from orange to pale green, and bright green for the feature light on the top. The feature light was done with green (PG36), then a mix of green and yellow (PG36 + PY184), then a strip of paper showing through to give a glow-effect. Its tricky to do this, let alone when standing by my bike in the dark downtown. 

PJD graff downtown green light, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, May 2026

I was standing under the train bridge where the canal path ends, and heads off to the Old Port. There is a bright lamp with LED white light making it possible to paint this scene, you see my shadow standing by my bike in the foreground. In the background I changed the sign to say Farine Five Roses PJD. That's one thing the graffiti people can't do... put their initials in fluorescent red light. 

Farine Five Roses PJD under bridge, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, May 2026

On the way back I caught this view of a bunch of corporate office towers illuminated in red white and blue, which took me a second to understand.... its meant to support the Montreal Canadiens, bleu blanc et rouge! I used an abstract approach to get the idea down, and omitted the interesting trees from the foreground for the sake of time. It would have taken 20 minutes or so for this to dry enough, and I really just wanted to go home at this point. It was a nice cool evening though. I did one more painting that I will post separately, its kind of outrageous. 

Corporate passion, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, May 2026 

Abstract paintings, remains of the tubes

As I use up paint tubes, I make sure to squeeze out every last drop onto the palette. However, the tubes can easily be cut open and there is more paint hiding in there. After collecting a bag of used up tubes, I started cutting some open, recovering what I can, and making these abstract paintings on weekends and evenings. This one is a hybrid of the words Magenta and Montreal.. The magenta shapes are supposed to be like people holding hands or shaking hands.  

Magentreal, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, April 2026 

With a lot of yellow tubes over the years, its the most used colour I have by far, I tried to use as much as possible in this painting along with orange, brown, and lime-green. Its like a 1970's era wallpaper or curtain pattern. Van Gogh used a lot of yellow paint, he was constanly asking his brother to send more. 

Mustard and Mud, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, April 2026 

Inspired by the rivers in Winnipeg which come together and apart as they meander, this painting used bright yellow surrounded by black, dark green, and dark red, with a chunk of bright green. The dark green and red are the perylenes... perylene green with perylene red. Despite having similar chemical structures, these two pigments are nearly opposite on the hue circle. So perylene green and red are together, chemically, but apart, visually. 

Together Apart, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, April 2026 

Winnpeg City, shades of beige

I mentioned it before in the blogs, Winnipeg had a distinct beige/tan/brown colouration. In fact, I ran out of raw umber, a dark chocolatey brown, and raw sienna, a sandy colour, on one of my two palettes. Lucky I fully loaded two palettes for the trip and had enough to get through. This scene shows the Oxford Hotel, on the right, with another distinct mid 19th century building on the left, which stretched all the way down the block. I posted this on location earlier. It was the second day in Winnipeg for me, and I was pleased to see a big blue sky and mostly clear sunny weather for the rest of the trip. 

Oxford Hotel, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2026

This scene had an impressive range of beige, ranging from a light cream off-white, to a tea-with-milk and caramel tones. It was a challenge to mix this colours, I used variations of raw sienna (PBr7), green umber (PBr7), burnt yellow ochre (PR102) and orange tints (PO62). 

Beige buildings, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2026

For some reason, this painting took me longer than usual, there were a lot of interlocking parts and perspectives to try and capture. I will just post the rest of the Winnipeg paintings in this blog, although I made a few cuts with paintings that did not quite work out the way I hoped. All in all it was a a surprisingly fruitful painting trip, surrounded by an Immunology Conference, or the other way around maybe! 

Brown buildings, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2026

Another tricky painting to pull off, this is a small hot dog and hamburger stand on Main street near the train station. It had a closed porch area, and small serving counter inside. A lot of people came and went to the shop as I painted. Cars rumbled by on the right. 

VJ's Drive In, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2026

This building seemed to be abandoned, but maybe it was apartments. On the facade, it said 'The Winnipeg' printed in stone, so it must be mid 19th century, or early 20th century. Perhaps it was once a hotel, given its proximity to the train station, just a few blocks to the south. The lower part of the facade had a colourful pink mural with a fish. 

The Winnipeg, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2026

Here is a close-up of the side of the Nutty Club candy factory, there is a panorama I posted earlier. In this version, I made the bricks look like little pink and yellow candies! The windows are also coloured differently to give the impression of candy. In real life, it was all cream-colour and shades of grey. 

Nutty Club close-up, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2026

Portage is the main commercial drag of Winnipeg, the hockey arena, and many shops and restaurants are up and down the strip. Looking at it from this angle, there was a lot of traffic. Most people drove cars in Winnipeg, just a few pedestrians like me here and there. 

Portage Street traffic, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2026

 

A group of people with Iranian flags gathered here on the weekend as I painted the scene of the Oxford Hotel. So I did a quick scene of one of the flags in the foreground, with an ornate building in the background. 

Iranian Flag, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2026 

Another overpass sky-walk, with a Tim Horton's in the lower right, although I changed it to PJD 26. I didn't paint people much on this trip, preferring to stick with landscapes and cars, with the occasional goose. There are some silhouettes up in the sky-walk here, behind green-tinted glass. That's it for the Winnipeg blogs for now, I might write one up on my thoughts on the colour palette of Winnipeg which was rather interesting. 

Overpass and Tim Horton's, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, April 2026